‘I’m still tortured by what I saw’

Posted by Brad at 6:12pm Sunday, November 30, 2008

Matthew Alexander, a pseudonym for a veteran who led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006, writes in today’s Washington Post about the cost of America’s use of torture — known in Bushspeak as “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

This piece is a must-read.


| Filed under America, Bush Administration, Quoteworthy, Worth Considering
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3 Comment(s)

  1. On Nov 30, 2008, Scott said:

    Yeah dude, so is this:

    http://environmentalrepublican.blogspot.com/2008/11/mumbai-jews-tortured-liberals-silent.html

  2. On Dec 1, 2008, Brad said:

    Scott, I have to concur with one of the commenters on your referenced post…

    Your post is absurd. If you are this partisan — if you believe that “liberals,” or anyone who opposes torture, is somehow okay with this — you need to step back and place yourself in the real world.

    Hardly anyone is okay with this. It’s disgusting that anyone is so ignorant that they would torture someone simply for their religious beliefs… I wish I could say it was more shocking than it is.

    But to try and turn this around and indict a political opponent because you didn’t see them express outrage on links from Technorati? That is ignorance too, my friend. It’s the kind of ignorant, partisan bullshit that gets groups foaming at the mouth, acting like the “other side” are a bunch of inhumane hypocrites and evil idiots.

    Any torture by any person, group or government against any human being is outrageous, condemnable and morally indefensible. I don’t make the distinction based on race, nationality or religion.

    I have heard widespread condemnation of the terrorist act and the associated mistreatment and torture of the hostages — conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat, Christian and non-Christian. Were you equally outraged when conservatives and administration apologists were not only absent in condemning our own government’s use of internationally recognized torture methods, but in fact were defending and promoting it?

  3. On Dec 1, 2008, Joe (the objective) said:

    Where do you even begin to address a complete non sequitur with someone who doesn’t grasp logic?

    I didn’t once see Scott address the neglect and torture of innocent child abuse victims in this country. Does his silence on this topic suggest something of his views on this topic… can we infer that he does not care?

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